The Professor and the Madman, (Hardcover)

from kslade

Extremely interesting account of an unstable prisoner who contributes considerable research to the making of the giant Oxford English Dictionary. He becomes friends with Prof. James Murray who spearheaded most of the work on it.

from allgenresbookworm

Simon Winchester is not a linear writer. Instead, he likes to weave back and forth from the main story to different background stories that do end up coming back to the main story...eventually. What I found fascinating was the background story of two men that were geniuses that come from opposite...

from greeniezona

I remembered my father raving about this book at some point, so when I saw it in a cute little Olive edition, I couldn't resist. It ended up being everything I expected from a book warmly recommended by my dad -- interesting, education, full of anecdotes to repeat to other people, and having a le...

from eleanor_eader

W.C. Minor was an American army surgeon who began to suffer from paranoid delusions and guilt-ridden fantasies, and was eventually incarcerated in Broadmoor for the random and senseless murder of a man in London. His story is both tragic and fascinating; from his suite of two cells, this educated...

from kmstock

A very interesting story about the creation of the first Oxford English Dictionary. Of particular interest (in my view) was the method in which members of the public read various books and collected quotations and sent them in, so it was an example of what we now call crowd-sourcing for a very tr...